Pacific Ocean Garbage Island Bigger Than US
This may be the most disturbing environmental issue I have read about in a long time. Apparently, the currents of the Pacific Ocean work in a way that they round up a majority of the garbage from the Pacific Ocean into one large mass. This mass is twice the size of the continental United States and is estimated to contain roughly 100 million tons of plastic garbage.
This mass of floating rubbish is being dubbed the Pacific Plastic Soup. It is not exactly an island, in that it does not sit on the surface of the ocean.
“Because the plastic is translucent and lies just beneath the surface, it is apparently undetectable by satellite photos.”
“The material is breaking down continually. It is photodegrading all the time. It is what I call a kaleidoscope or an alphabet soup. You won’t see it from a satellite shot of the ocean. You only see it from the bows of ships.”
As far as I know there are no efforts to clean this up and even worse it is expanding rapidly. If we do not stop using disposable plastics soon, the size of the soup could double in size within 10 years.
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Can you produce the images? So far, I have been unable to find any on credible sites. I must caution you. If you would like to be considered credible, you must not throw just anything onto the web. People are becoming wary of false information and environmental issues are becoming more and more important so you don’t want to turn people off.
Good luck and I would love to see the images.
I too am blogging on this tragedy.
It breaks my heart to see the ocean treated as a toilet to be filled with toxic waste.
For those wanting image, try this BBC News Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8k__5wSnIA&feature=related
Thanks and keep getting the word out!
And one more link with a little backing to it:
http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Moore-North-Pacific-Central-Gyre.htm
Thanks Ken, very helpful links.
god people are so stupid sometimes. There is not a solid plastic island of trash floating around somewhere ion the pacific.
What it is is supposedly an area twice that of texas is POLLUTED, and even that estimate is extremely biased. An enviromentalist college student did a film on pollution in the ocean, and claimed that there was an area twice that of texas (how he got that i dont know) that was polluted, There is no solid mass of garbage, though most enviromentalists would love it to be true.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7rNYzSH-BA
copy and past this to see the original story that started all the rumors